Zimbabwe: government and unions headed for showdown?

The Zimbabwe government is headed for a possible showdown with the country’s trade unions after it announced plans to review labour laws in a bid to reduce “the cost of doing business”.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who mooted the idea, argued that reforms were necessary because of current legislation which makes public sector costs very high, thus adversely impacting on national economic competitiveness.

He said the cabinet had agreed to amend the Labour Act Chapter 28.01 to make it easier for companies to retrench employees with very little or no terminal benefits and also deal with working hours and arbitral awards systems which he said favoured employees.

But the country’s largest trade union umbrella body, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) said the ZANU-PF government was trying to introduce labour market flexibility through the back door and has threatened mass protests.

ZCTU Secretary General, Japhet Moyo told Equal Times that the proposed review of the Labour Act would take away the gains made by labour over the years and hurt the workers most, as it would leave them at the mercy of employers who would have the right to hire and fire as they please.

Moyo said while the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF - Zimbabwe’s social dialogue platform) was still in the process of negotiating on labour law reviews, labour market flexibility was never part of the proposals to be included in the new legislation.

He said the TNF was only discussing reviews in line with the recommendations of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Commission of Inquiry, which emphasised the harmonisation of the country’s labour laws.

“Our hope is that it is only a newspaper story because if it is reality, we are going to reject it. We will challenge it even if it means going back to the streets. We never discussed any employment flexibility or productivity linked wages as part of the labour law review,” said Moyo.

Shooting itself in the foot

The union leader also said the ZANU-PF government, which promised to create two million jobs in its election manifesto, was shooting itself in the foot as it was now bringing back colonial-era legislation.

“The concept the government is talking about has been tried elsewhere and research has been done by renowned organisations such as the ILO which have proved that they don’t create jobs at all,” Moyo said.

A worker who works at a bakery in Harare said that, if implemented, the labour law reviews would make the plight of workers even worse as they were already being ill-treated even with legislation in place which is meant to protect them.

“The problem we have is that our government ministers and legislators are the same people who have become employers over the years, so they are basically protecting their own interests.

“These people were already disregarding the law and I tell you if they have their way, they would want us to work for nothing,” said the worker on condition of anonymity.

“No need to panic”

However, there now seems to be discord in government, with the Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Services, Tongai Muzenda, saying the labour law review document which was being discussed at the TNF had not yet reached cabinet as announced by Chinamasa.

“There is no need to panic because the truth is that we are not fast tracking the Labour Act review as we are still consulting with stakeholders such as lawyers and employers.

“Labour unions must therefore, be told that the decision to review the Act has not reached cabinet,” he was quoted in a local newspaper.

His boss, Nicholas Goche, who was recently re-assigned to the Labour and Social Welfare portfolio at the end of the inclusive government, told the ZCTU in a meeting before Chinamasa’s announcement that he was not going to support the proposed reviews as long as he was still the Minister of Labour.

The ZCTU had argued that the government had jumped the gun by rushing the labour review document to cabinet before presenting it to its TNF partners and smuggled the issue of labour marker flexibility behind their back.

The labour body has since launched a campaign against productivity linked wages aimed at educating its membership on the implications of the intended labour law reforms.

Ironically, Goche was also the Minister of Labour between 2005 and 2008 when trade union leaders and activists were brutally attacked by state security agents on 13 September 2006, a day which has become an annual day of commemoration for Zimbabwe’s trade union movement.